A New Coalition

In the 1936 election, Roosevelt won a decisive victory over
his Republican opponent, Alf Landon of Kansas. He was
personally popular, and the economy seemed near recovery.
He took 60 percent of the vote and carried all but two
states. A broad new coalition aligned with the Democratic
Party emerged, consisting of labor, most farmers, most
urban ethnic groups, African Americans, and the
traditionally Democratic South. The Republican Party
received the support of business as well as middle-class
members of small towns and suburbs. This political
alliance, with some variation and shifting, remained intact
for several decades.

Roosevelt's second term was a time of consolidation. The
president made two serious political missteps: an
ill-advised, unsuccessful attempt to enlarge the Supreme
Court and a failed effort to "purge" increasingly
recalcitrant Southern conservatives from the Democratic
Party. When he cut high government spending, moreover, the
economy collapsed. These events led to the rise of a
conservative coalition in Congress that was unreceptive to
new initiatives.

From 1932 to 1938 there was widespread public debate on the
meaning of New Deal policies to the nation's political and
economic life. Americans clearly wanted the government to
take greater responsibility for the welfare of ordinary
people, however uneasy they might be about big government
in general. The New Deal established the foundations of the
modern welfare state in the United States. Roosevelt,
perhaps the most imposing of the 20th-century presidents,
had established a new standard of mass leadership.

No American leader, then or since, used the radio so
effectively. In a radio address in 1938, Roosevelt
declared: "Democracy has disappeared in several other
great nations, not because the people of those nations
disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of
unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children
hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government
confusion and government weakness through lack of
leadership." Americans, he concluded, wanted to defend
their liberties at any cost and understood that "the
first line of the defense lies in the protection of
economic security."